The Encyclopedia of Civil Aircraft

There was a time, not that long ago, when books of this type dominated the bargain displays at Barnes and Noble, B. Dalton Booksellers, and Crown Bookstores. I loved them for their size and relatively cheap prices at a time when my book buying dollar needed all the help it could get. It was the days before the internet took off and Wikipedia answered all questions. I think this is the first occasion I have actually read this book cover-to-cover, rather than reading just one article or looking at photographs and captions.

Weighing in at a whopping 816 pages, "The Encyclopedia of Civil Aircraft" begins with a brief introduction before embarking on its aircraft tour. The end of the book provides a chronology of significant civil aviation show more events, specifications for select aircraft, and an index. In between are 34 chapters, each chapter break providing an opportunity to display more gorgeous photography with which this book is well-endowed. The book is arranged alphabetically by manufacturer, although there are exceptions, such as when the editor decides to have a subchapter dedicated to business jets or microlights. The publishing history of the book is interesting. The copyright date for this volume under the Thunder Bay banner is 1999, but there is material here from an earlier partwork (that's those multipart magazine issues, usually by British publishers) called "Airplane" by Orbis Publishing that dates from 1993.

Despite its bulk and inexpensive price, "The Encyclopedia of Civil Aircraft" is a fun read. British aviation writers have led the field for years, and this book's articles are certainly up to that standard. One just has to get part their hangups on American civil airliner sales successes versus their British competitors. The Encyclopedia is by no means comprehensive. Some contemporary encyclopedias attempt to cover their field completely with a series of compact articles. In this book, the articles are fairly comprehensive, but the range of topics is more limited. For example, general aviation aircraft take a back seat in these pages--while Cessna gets some coverage, Beech and Piper get quite limited entries and other nations' general aviation companies are ignored altogether. The editors were limited by what partwork was available--one suspects that a military aviation volume using the same source material would have been a much larger work. This use of partwork sources also leads to some duplication; for example, there is one article for the Antonev An-24 and another on the Antonev twins (An-24,26, 30, and 32)that cover similar ground.

Despite the flaws, I am happy to have this book in my library--it fills a gap in my own civil aviation collection, and it does so with excellence. A fine souvenir of an age not so long gone.... show less

book describes every significant civil aircraft that has gone into production over the past 80 years. There are colour and black and white photographs on every page, showing the aircraft in a range of liveries…illustrated guide to civil aircraft that have been flown in every country of the world. It includes 125 individual planes used by commercial airlines from the giant Guppy cargo plane to the single-seat racing plane, from the glamorous business jets to the classic Boeing 747. Organized in alphabetical order by manufacturer, entries include a short history of the company, an account of each model's design, development and distribution…Arranged in alphabetical order, these are mostly airliners with an occasional piece on Tiger show more Moths, Pitts Specials and Formula One racers to spice it up. It is very nicely done. The only surprise I found was that although the Douglas DC-2 is covered, the DC-3 / C-47 is not found anywhere. show less